Thursday, 17 February 2011

It's hard to imagine....two years have passed with the $814 billion stimulus package. At this point....shockingly enough, around $168 billion has yet to be spent.

If you ran into a bar and told forty people this....most would start asking questions. It wouldn't matter if you were Republican, Democrat, Independent, or radical environmentalist. Most folks have this funny idea that the entire bucket of money has already been spent.

This is kinda like Grandma baking cookies and five days later....she tells you that there are still lots of cookies left in the jar.

This week...one of the rookie Representatives in Congress came up and sent up a bill....to take down the $168 billion and just send it back into the Treasury. The current bet is that it will pass via the House but the overwhelming number of Democrats in the Senate will ensure it stops right there....and even if they didn't....the President would take the next step to stop it.

Some people still argue over the way that the stimulus was organized. If you'd given the money to people via tax refunds, then it would have flushed out into the public sector quicker and been spent on store goods, cars, or covering house payments. The economy might have picked up quicker. The strength of the stimulus ended up being leveled across three years and it probably hasn't been very well noticed after the 12th month.

So as you sit and sip on your beer tonight....pondering the dealings of government business....pause for a moment over the meaning of $168 billion laying in your hand. Once you decided to spend it on something....even if it's two years later....you ought to continue spending it on that something. That's government logic, and you shouldn't argue with that.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.